


there's no comfort in the waiting room

by fullmetallizard



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cancer, M/M, child sickness, eruri - Freeform, t for language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-20 11:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9489971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullmetallizard/pseuds/fullmetallizard
Summary: “Mr. Ackerman,” the doctor said. “I know that your mother-“Levi put a hand up, stopping the sentence before the doctor could get it out. “This isn’t about my mother. This is about my son.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> despite my wishes, I do not own snk.

Levi was just about to turn the stove on to start dinner when he heard his son’s strained voice from the living room.

“Papa?” Abel cried.

Levi walked into the room and had to take a deep breath upon the bloody sight that was his child’s face. Blood was pouring from his nose onto his chin and clothes. He had tears spilling over his lashes, turning pink on the lower half of his face.

Levi grabbed a handful of tissues from the coffee table and started mopping up the mess. “What happened, Abel?” He asked. “Did you fall?”

The dark-headed boy shook his head, taking a shaky breath through his tears. “No, it just started and I couldn’t stop it. I got it on the carpet, Papa,” he sobbed. He cast his blue eyes down to the puddle of blood at his tiny feet. “I’m sorry. Daddy said you hate when the carpet gets dirty but I didn’t mean to. I promise. I’m real sorry.”

“Hey, hey,” Levi soothed, pressing a kiss to the four year old’s forehead. “It’s okay. Papa’s not mad. I’m worried about _you_. Not the carpet.”

Abel seemed to calm at this, taking a few deep breaths. Levi noted that he was paler than normal.

“Do you want to take a bath? I’m sure you’re sticky and that can’t feel too good.”

Abel nodded and scrubbed at his eyelids, leaving streaks of blood around his eyes. Levi swallowed down a wave of nausea and the thought of germs germs _germs_ and took his son’s hand, leading him to the bathroom.

The blood stopped when the tub was almost full. Levi plopped the boy in and made quick work of cleaning him, changing the water a couple of times to make sure it was fresh.

He was tying the waist of Abel’s bright green frog bathrobe when Erwin passed by the door, still dressed from work.

He looked down at his watch. “It’s a little early for bath time.”

“I had another nosebleed, Daddy,” Abel informed him, reaching up for a hug. Erwin knelt and wrapped his arms around him.

“Another one? That’s the third one this month, right?”

Abel nodded, wrapping his skinny arms around his dad’s neck.

“I think we need to take him to the pediatrician,” Levi said, hanging the damp towels over the shower rod.

“It’s just a nosebleed, Lee.”

“I’m making an appointment,” he said in a firm tone.

Erwin untangled Abel from him and stood. “Whatever you say,” he smiled.

“I didn’t get to make dinner by the way,” Levi said.

Erwin shrugged. “I’ll check to see if we have any takeout menus.”

…

That night, Erwin woke up and rolled over in bed to get more comfortable and saw Levi staring up at the ceiling.

“Lee?” He asked, sleepiness making his voice thick.

“Go back to sleep,” he answered.

Erwin looked over at the alarm clock on nightstand, the cherry red numbers abrasive to his fatigued eyes.

“Is everything okay?” He asked his husband.

“Everything’s fine.” His voice was low and flat but there was an unsteadiness there that gave him away.

“What’s bothering you?”

“I’m just…worried.”

“About what?”

“Abel,” he answered, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead.

“The nosebleeds?” He reached over and brushed the bangs out of Levi’s eyes.

“Yeah.” His voice was small and he kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“When I was little, my allergies were so bad I got nosebleeds. He probably just needs his nose cauterized.”

“Abel doesn’t have allergies. He’s also not biologically related to you, dumbass.”

“Lee,” he sighed.

“My mom had nosebleeds, Erwin. And he’s pale all the time. He’s lost some weight.”

Erwin felt his heart break a little. “Oh, sweetheart.” This was really eating at Levi and it hurt to see him suffering. “He had a cold last week. It’s probably just hanging around a little. Don’t worry yourself too much.”

“I can’t…I can’t lose him. We worked so hard to get him and he’s been ours for four years now. I just…couldn’t live with something happening to him.”

“Hey,” Erwin said sternly, pressing a kiss to his husband’s forehead. “Abel’s not going anywhere. He’s perfectly fine.”

“I just…I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You’ll feel better after you take him to the doctor.”

“I hope so.”

Erwin pulled Levi so he was flush against his chest. He pressed a kiss to the crown of his head. “Get some sleep, Lee. Just relax.”

Levi nodded and closed his eyes. Finally, the fatigue was too much and Erwin found himself falling back into sleep.

He just barely felt Levi curl into him before letting out a tiny snore. 


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, Levi found himself sitting in a cold exam room at Abel’s pediatrician’s office, the sharp smell of antiseptic making his eyes water. Though he often lusted over the idea of industrial strength cleaning products, he was not a huge fan of thinking of the reasons they were needed.

Abel sat with his little legs dangling off the end of the exam table. He was ripping the paper lining he was sitting on. He finished ripping a square out of the lining and then moved his hand to start another.

“Abel, stop it,” Levi said, uncrossing and re-crossing his legs.

“Why are we here, Papa? I want to go to the park.” He had started kicking the air to watch the untied laces of his left shoe fly through the air.

Levi bit his lip. He made it a point to be as honest as was appropriate with his child, but he didn’t want to convey how worried he actually was. “We’re here because you’ve been having nosebleeds and the doctor can tell us why.” Not a lie.

Abel took that in and then nodded. “Can we still go to the park?”

Levi smiled a little at his persistence. “If we have time after we leave. We need to get home before Daddy so we can make dinner.”

“Daddy can cook!” Abel insisted. Erwin made pancakes on their birthdays and on his and Levi’s anniversary. Abel couldn’t exactly understand that his dad’s culinary skills didn’t expand much from pancakes and some mostly burnt bacon.

Levi was opening his mouth to reply when the doctor came in.

“Well, hello Abel. How are you feeling today?” The doctor asked, smiling. Levi was immediately unhappy with the man’s unkempt beard. Shouldn’t a doctor be more diligent about hygiene?

“Like I wanna go to the park,” Abel asked, pouting just a little.

The doctor laughed loudly and then took the stethoscope from around his neck to listen to Abel’s tiny heart and lungs. “What brings you in today?” He asked, looking in Levi’s direction.

“He’s been having a lot of nosebleeds. And…his face doesn’t have color like it usually does. And he’s lost weight.” He tried not to sound neurotic but couldn’t help but wonder if he was.

“How much?” The doctor asked, guiding Abel to lay on his back so he could examine his abdomen.

“We don’t have a scale but I can tell by holding him. And his clothes are starting to get too loose. A couple pounds, maybe.”

“I see. Can you sit up for me?” He asked Abel, helping him up. He started examining the lymph nodes by his jaw.  “Does he ever scratch his eyes? Any runny nose or sneezing?”

“I sneezed _aaall_ last week,” Abel offered with a grin. “I had green snot.”

Levi winced, picturing the horrific scene in the tissues he’d used to wipe his son’s nose. It was something he’d rather forget. He found it particularly disgusting that Abel found it so interesting. “It’s Hulk colored!” He’d insisted.

“He had a cold. It’s lingering a little but it’s mostly gone. But he doesn’t have allergies, seasonal or otherwise, if that’s what you’re asking.”

The doctor raised a brow, probably at Levi’s tone. “Mr. Ackerman…I know your mother-“

Levi put a hand up, pausing the sentence before the doctor could finish it. “This isn’t about my mother. This is about my son.”

The doctor looked like he wanted to say more but he shook his head. “It’s probably something viral that caused the cold like symptoms. Those could have made his nostrils dry. We can run his blood to be sure.”

“Yes,” he answered simply, hating that this doctor made him feel overbearing and ridiculous.

Levi was confident that the tests needed to be run, but his stomach still sank at the idea of Abel being in the same room as a needle without Erwin there. Erwin handled needles, blood, dirt, sickness. He took a deep breath and gave a reassuring smile to his son, who was looking back and forth between him and the doctor.

“A nurse will be in shortly,” the pediatrician told him after checking Abel’s throat and ears and giving them the okay. He ruffled Abel’s hair and then left. “Hope I don’t see you for a while,” he said on his way out and then laughed at his own joke. Levi decided as the door shut that he hated this man.  

“Papa?” Abel asked, smoothing his hair. “How they will get my blood?”

Levi looked down at his fingernails, and felt his pulse pick up. Somewhere in the time it took him to get himself and his son ready and get to the doctor’s office, he’d ripped the nail of his ring finger. One jagged nail lined up with nine perfectly manicured ones. A sign, he was sure, that something bad was going to happen.

He turned his gaze onto Abel who was sitting, kicking his dangling legs back and forth, looking at him like he had all the answers in the world. He sighed, settling on full disclosure this time. “They’re going to put a needle in your arm.”

Abel’s face immediately fell. “Like a shot?” He asked, voice and lip quivering.

“It feels like a shot, yes.”

“Oh,” Abel sniffed.

Levi’s felt a pain in his chest from the sound of his child trying to be brave and tough. He could see Abel clenching his jaw to keep it steady and pressing his palms to his eyes, trying to stop the tears before they could fall.

“It will only hurt for a moment,” he told him, getting up and walking over to wrap his arms around him.

“Don’t worry, Papa,” Abel whimpered. “I’ll be brave.” He leaned back and flashed a weak smile.

“You know you can cry if you need to, Abel,” he soothed.

A nurse holding a tray walked in before Abel could answer.

“Okay, little man,” she smiled out. “I’m Sasha and we’re gonna get some blood, okay? It’s not super fun but it’ll be over in just a couple minutes okay? And after, if it’s okay with your dad, we’ll get you a lollipop.”

Abel had a genuine smile for this. “Can I, Papa?!”

Levi hated the idea of his kid sucking on a rock of sugar but figured he deserved it. “Sure, honey.”

The nurse set up and picked up a pad of rubbing alcohol. “It’s going to be a little cold,” she warned before rubbing a small circle in the crook of Abel’s arm.

“Could you clean it again just to be sure?” Levi asked before he could stop it. He could practically feel Erwin’s disapproving gaze. “Just…I don’t want him to get an infection.”

Her smile tightened at the edges but she quickly recovered. “No problem,” she chirped, reaching for another cotton pad.

Abel reached for his hand and Levi grabbed it and gave him the best smile he could. His smile quickly faded and his heart broke as Abel tried, and failed, to keep his sobs contained. 

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

 Erwin got home, mentally exhausted from spending the day arguing numbers he didn’t care about to coworkers he didn’t care about clients he didn’t care about. Levi had seemed really wound up before he’d left that morning and he’d been worried all day that’d he’d come home to see his husband’s fingers scrubbed raw and the whole house smelling of bleach. He hoped that taking Abel to the pediatrician had calmed him some. A relapse was the last thing they needed right now

He took his shoes off by the door and walked into the living room. His son wasn’t there begging to play the Wii for “just ten more minutes” or using the ottomans to protect his feet from lava or alligators or whatever his imagination cooked up that day.

He glanced into the kitchen and saw dishes drying and a covered plate on the table. He walked down the hall and saw the bathroom empty as well. He opened his bedroom door and saw Abel curled up on his side under the down comforter and Levi going through a manuscript in the lamplight.

“Hey,” he said, quietly.

“Hi,” Levi answered, his red pen still held in his teeth. “You’re late. Was your day okay?”

“Same old bullshit. I always wonder if I made a mistake moving to business. Accounting for people was much easier.”

Levi nodded.

“How long has he been asleep?” He asked, nodding to Abel.”

“About an hour ago. But he wants to sleep with us so you don’t have to move him.”

This surprised Erwin. Short of nightmares and sickness, Levi tried to their son to sleep in his own bed most of the time.

“How was it at the doctor’s office?”

“They took blood,” Levi said, finally looking up from the page he was on. “He cried a lot.”

“Is it just a viral thing?”

Levi sighed and took the pen out of his mouth to spin it through his fingers. “They want us to go to the children’s hospital so they can take blood there.”

Erwin’s mouth went dry. “Did they mess up the tests?”

“No,” Levi answered quietly. He started chewing on his lip. “There were abnormalities. Particularly with his white blood cell count. It’s too high.”

Erwin found that it was getting increasingly harder to breathe. He looked over at this sleeping child, who was holding his arm, presumably the one with the needlestick, close to his chest like he was protecting it.

“Well, I’ll have to call in tomorrow. I’m sure Janine is still in the office, I could call right now.”

Levi shook his head and rubbed under his eyes, his dark circles looking especially dark, almost bruised. “I don’t think you have to do that.”

“Yeah,” Erwin said, pulling out his phone and entering his passcode. “But I want to.”

He arranged everything with his secretary who he managed to catch right before she was walking out the door and then went into the kitchen to eat. He browsed various medical pages to get an idea of what a high white count might mean. The results varied from anywhere to an infection to various cancers, his husband’s greatest fear leftover from watching his mother wither away into nothing. Erwin’s roasted vegetables turned bitter in his mouth and he had to put his phone down.

He put his face in his hands and thought back to when Levi’s mom died. They’d been dating for two years and he remembered being so scared that Levi would never recover. His nails were always clipped to the quick, often bloodied from cutting off jagged edges that only Levi could see. The doors had to be locked and checked and checked and checked. The thick, ammonia smell of bleach still made Erwin’s stomach turn.

He couldn’t help but let the worried thoughts of sickness and Levi’s compulsions fill his mind as he washed his plate and fork. He was putting them on the drying rack when Levi joined him in the kitchen.

“I’m sure it’s just a small infection, Lee. Just some antibiotics and we’ll forget this all happened.”

Levi smirked and started putting the dry dishes away. “Consulting Dr. Google, I see.”

“Lee,” he said, voice sounding sterner than he meant it to. “The therapist warned you that catastrophic thinking is one of your biggest struggles.”  

Levi looked over at him, incredulous. “I’m aware, Erwin,” he snapped, his name on his husband’s tongue sounded full of malice. “I still go once a month.”

“Do you think this is what this is?”

Levi sighed, exasperated. “No, I don’t. I think it’s a normal reaction to being told your kid has abnormalities in his bloodwork. Anyone would be worried. I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

“Hey, hey,” Erwin said gently, pulling the sheet pan out of his husband’s hands and placing it on the counter. He wrapped his arms around him and planted a kiss on his hair. “It’s going to be fine, I’m sure of it.”

“And if it’s not?” Levi asked, barely audible. There was a vulnerability in his voice that Erwin had only heard a handful of times before. Erwin broke the embrace and grabbed his hand.  

“We’ll handle it,” he answered, smoothing his thumb over the weathered gold of his wedding band. “We can handle anything.”

But as soon as the words left his mouth, he saw the nail of Levi’s ring finger. Cut short, the corners stained with dried blood.

He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Well, let’s finish these dishes.”


End file.
